Sample long-distance visitation schedules?

[indefatigable]

Hello from a newbie! I'm pleased to find such an excellent resource for the issues we're dealing with right now, and I hope to contribute eventually, as well as to benefit from your collective experience.  ;)

My partner has pre-court "mediation" tomorrow with his ex, who currently has full custody of their 4th grade child, because we are requesting increased custody and visitation -- and we have word that she is going to make a play to move with their child more than six hours' drive away (but not out-of-state.) She had never proposed this prior to his petitioning the court for increased custody.

Because interaction between both parents is highly stressful for both my partner and his daughter, I'm wondering if there might not be a way to make the long distance work in our favor, via fewer but much longer visits.

Does anyone have any personal experience with such arrangements?

I have had difficulty finding examples of what such a schedule might be, in order to evaluate the pros and cons.  Are there any on SPARC or elsewhere that you can point me to?

Many thanks!

[ocean]

There are many different schedules but I would get the school calendar and ask for every long weekend from Fri-mon night. They usually have one every month. Then go for all breaks....spring break is usually a week long, some states have Feb week long break, christmas week, and the summers (6-8 weeks is common for long distance).
Good luck!

[Ref]

Half of all school breaks. He alternates every year so in odd he gets one half of the holidays and in even years he has the others. Christmas is split in half so he has the first half in even years and the last half on odd years. Summer he has all but the first 2 weeks and the last week, but we also live 1500 miles away so we dont get to see SD on weekends often. I think in your situation I would try for half of summer. He also has any weekend as long as he gives BM 7 days notice.

You want to be very specific including times of pick-up and location of pick up, who pays for travel, how make-up visitation shoudl be worked out if missed during the year.  Name the breaks by the name of the school district's names and state which will be taken in odd and which will be taken in even.

Best of luck
Ref

[indefatigable]

Thank you for your examples -- we had the mediation today and it was not brought up -- not that we expected it to be -- but we'll see what turns up at court next week.